Her awakening was not beautiful. It was not graceful; it was something that needed to be finished quickly on account of bad weather on the rise. Perhaps if her awakening process, the weaving of her soul, had begun earlier or even later in the day this issue would have been avoided. Or perhaps the Grand Weaver felt thrill and adventure was necessary for this one. Regardless of the how or the more pressing why, all at once, Tsisia remembered awakening.

Her eyes flashed open, not unlike someone rising from a nightmare. Her mind grasped at tiny details of her sleeping world, the idea of being and not being all at the same time. Emptiness and darkness, a non-physical shape and then within seconds this changed and transformed. She became. She was suddenly a living thing. A breathing thing. Real.

A storm was festering overhead. Her body was becoming soaked by heavy droplets of water and Tsisia felt the uncomfortable sting of one as it fell into her eye.

The newly awakened Nantil blinked. The water left her eye and pooled on her cheek, remaining there, unmoving only so long as she did not move herself. Then with another droplet landing on her face the two droplets merged into one fat droplet, too heavy to stay on Tsisia’s face they fell off and onto the ground.

With a grunt the Nantil worked her body to turn over. She had been woven on her side, her paws gently resting on top of one another, her face resting on the ground, tilted to face upwards. It wasn’t all that uncomfortable, but being pelleted with water droplets was beginning to make her feel heavy.

Her back and part of her legs and face were lined with scales; thankfully these repelled the water and kept her side mostly dry. The remainder of her fur-lined body however, her cheeks, her legs, her tail, they absorbed it. She was becoming drenched.

The Nantil forced her legs to work and move to enable her to stand. She felt her muscles as they pushed against the ground the first time, her toes positioned solidly in the mud as she lifted her lanky body off the ground. She wobbled, trying to maintain her new sense of balance and at the same time gaze at the world around her. The sky was a depressing shade of grey, and from it was falling water. ’Rain.’ Tsisia thought to herself. The sky was making it rain, and the Nan noted the rain was beginning to increase.

’The rain is angry.’ She thought to herself. Why else would it begin to pelt down harder? It must have been upset. She was much too new and unexperienced with her world to fathom why but Tsisia knew that the rain was angry and that she could try and get out of its way. Looking to her left the Nan realized she had awoken nested under a large leaf that had given her some shelter from the increasing rainfall. But not enough, she was still victim to getting wet.

Tsisia took a step forward and nearly fell. The mud was slippery underneath her and she was forced to tip-toe her way out of it in order to not end up with her face being introduced to the floor. Once her paws finally touched at least partly solid dirt Tsisia straighten up her posture. Then, she heard a crack noise overhead.

The noise made her jump. She hadn’t expected it. Because she jumped she subsequently slid on the mud formulating at her feet. The Nantili scrapped fruitlessly at the wet ground in an attempt to avoid slipping. Her claws made light marks in the mud as she panicked and dug at it furiously, but this still didn’t prevent Tsisia from falling over.

She landed on her shoulder and a splash of mud shot up around her as she did so. Tsisia released a gasp at the pain that greeted her from her shoulder joint. The Nan crawled away from the mud pool, further to the side of the forest where more trees covered the ground making it reasonably dry. This time when Tsisia stood she was drenched head to toe, in both water and mud. Her pale white fur was now caked with brown paste, and the squirming b’alam did not relish the feeling of it sticking to her sides.

She stood up once again, this time considerably more carefully and using a tree trunk as a support. Thankfully the slippery-spot of mud seemed limited to only that one area that she had tried to walk on, as she fled deeper into the woods and discovered running was easier where the thick foliage was.

She ran but had no real destination in mind. Where was she? Who was she? Questions for when the rain stopped being angry she supposed. Oh. No, wait, she knew her name. Tsisia was her name. She hadn’t even stopped to think that maybe she had another identity to call herself, she knew from the moment of her awakening she was Tsisia. It struck her as odd how she knew some things but not others in the few minutes it had been since she had first woken up. She knew her name, she knew how to move, but she had no idea what place in the world she was in. She didn’t know how big the world was or how small. Was that mud puddle as big as the world could get? If she kept running would she somehow end up going in a complete circle and ending up back where she started?

Tsisia shoved these questions aside. The most pressing matter was the fact that the rain was heavy now. The sky was practically weeping at this point and even with the forest plants to help cover her, it wasn’t enough to keep her dry.

Also, the sky kept ‘crackling’. Large rumbles shook the air followed by bright flashes of light. Though Tsisia was trying to maintain some degree of bravery in the face of this bad weather the roars the sky made were scary. She wanted to hide, yes, and keep dry. But mostly she wanted to escape the lightning and thunder. It only served as prove to her how angry the rain was at this point. She needed to escape being in its path of destruction.

Tsisia began to pant as she ran through the forest madly. Her quest to find somewhere dry to hide was not turning out to be very successful, though that said it wasn’t a complete lost cause. She spied a tree that had collapsed over into another, maybe she’d hide under that if no better looking shelters came into view.

The Nantil slid to stop as heard the sound of running water. Not like the rainfall water, this was different. A more… Unique noise she supposed. Tsisia paused and twisted her ears, trying to find the source of the rushing noise and follow that. Her feet led her to a roaring vertical wave of water. The water came from above, though it was misty so it was hard to see the source but the water appeared to be falling. Waterfall.

As pretty as it was the rain was only making it seem like a giant hazard to try and avoid. More water might clean off her legs of the mud they had taken a bath in, but she’d be chilled to the bone and that was something Tsisia was trying to not have happen.

Peering to her right under the cover of a canopy of trees she spotted what looked like a hole in between two rocks. The dark patch… Was something there? Wasting no time Tsisia rushed over. She peered into the dark hole and though she couldn’t see anything she had the feeling it was dry. No rain was reaching wherever this crack in the mountainside lead. Casting a glance to her left she noted the boulder preventing her from entering the cave. It was large, but if she really put her effort into she’d maybe be capable of shifting it. The Nan placed two of her front paws on the rock and heaved.

The sound of something falling startled her. She twisted around in time to see a boulder smash into the ground behind her. Had she been positioned two inches further away from the rock she was shoving on…

The earth must not have liked her trying to reshape it she decided. The sky was angry, rain was angry, the earth was angry and she really, really needed a place to hide from the rain.

Tsisia gave a low moan of misery at her failed attempt to find a dry spot from the stupid rainfall. Maybe there was nowhere to hide. Maybe living normally included being soaked by rain. If that was the case she almost wished she hadn’t woken up to begin with, the rain was making her rather unhappy.

Turning towards the waterfall she walked up to the edge of the pool at the bottom of it. Apparently all the water flowed into this spot here after it finished falling. Good to know, she supposed. Tsisia crouched down and automatically sipped from the pond. It was nice to actually drink water instead of running from it. Especially after her jog, her tongue being relieved by taste of fresh liquid that she didn’t have to wait to drizzle and fill up in her mouth.

She didn’t detect any sort of motion but Tsisia rose her head to stare at couple of what she thought was oddly-placed bushes. They were right at the water’s edge, their backs resting against a cliff connected to the waterfall but that wasn’t what made them odd. What made it odd was there was a gap. The gap was between those two bushes and the bushes next to them running alongside the rest of the cliff base. It was as no plants ever thought to grow there, a thought that seemed odd to Tsisia. But then, that said, today was her very first in the world. She was learning everything about it as she went. Organic plant-life placement included.

Still, her curiosity piqued and the Nantil crawled forward to the bushes. She sniffed them, nothing unusual about that. She then moved the branches around, maybe they were all bunched up and-

There was a hole. In the side of the Cliffside behind the bushes was a hole. Tsisia bent down and pushed her face under the bushes. She sniffed the apparent pocket in the side of the cliff, it was dark, hard to see where it went but the hole was larger than she had expected. If she moved the bushes somehow she imagined that with only a mild crouch she’d be able to travel through it with ease.

It wouldn’t be appropriate to say that she surged forward, but the Nantil didn’t actually enter the cavern at a slow and cautious pace either. As soon as it became apparent that the dark cavern was indeed a cavern she entered it. Naturally, she couldn’t see anything. The darkness made sure of that. Even if the darkness was uncomfortable however, the rain was more uncomfortable, and in here was dry.

Tsisia rested against the wall of her new cave residence. She sighed in relief. Bless whatever creator had made her; this cave was a miracle of a discovery.

Now within dryness and safety Tsisia allowed herself to think. Where was she? Who creator her? Were there any others like her in the world? Her eyes began to droop when she finished pondering the last question. She was tired, needed rest to rejuvenate despite having awoken only maybe an hour earlier. The dark made her tired, she determined. However, before she properly drifter to sleep-land Tsisia listened the wind outside the cavern. She noted as she entered it that the wind was louder in here and the waterfall’s roar became a delightful hum. The wind… Was it, singing? Its song sounded sweet. Like calmness embodied. Maybe, just maybe the wind was trying to calm down the earth and the rainfall.

Which was why it sung such a sweet…

Sweet…

Song…

---

Tsisia awoke the next morning during the early hours. Though it was impossible for her to tell such faint sunlight had entered the cavern and it glistened on her face. Her body was sore from sleeping on hard rocks in an unnatural position and her throat had a lump in it from having slept with her mouth open, it had become dry.

Despite her grogginess at the new morning the Nantil was actually feeling pretty good. She crept out from her recluse spot near the waterfall and took a step back as she emerged. She squinted to adjust to the rays of strong sunlight that now basked the world in all its glory. The sun was bright, but welcomed by the Nantil. She enjoyed its company far more than she did the rain.

After taking a long sip from the pool Tsisia allowed her mind to spin once more with questions upon questions and then she prioritized what answers she wanted first. Where was she? Pretty important but knowing where she wasn’t going to help her very much when she didn’t know a whole lot about the world to begin with. Were their others like her? Beings that existed that shared her intelligence and maybe shaped in the same way she was? This question took hold in Tsisia’s mind. She wanted to know the answer to it. Though it led to an even more important question;

If there were others, how was she to find them?

Hmm. She considered this. How to go about searching for others. Maybe the wind would tell her, the wind that sung sweet songs.

Tsisia found herself distracted by the water of the pool. She gazed into; it was the first real look she had ever gotten of her appearance. Scabs had formulated at the sites of small cuts on neck, and probably arms and legs that she had gotten yesterday while running and crawling under the bushes at the entrance to her cave. She hadn’t noticed them then, but now they were evident to her. Her face was mainly protected by scales, and she possessed a large horn in the center of her forehead. Inside the horn was a ball of some kind, a light. She was aware these things existed, but it was fascinating to see what colours they were. Fascinating to see how they looked when she peered at her own reflection…

She made the decision that to find others like her, she’d follow the river. You see, the waterfall created a pool of water, and in turn that pool flowed out into the distance in the form of a thin stream. If she followed it then it was a strong possibility she’d get to a new location, something beyond waterfalls, jungles and caves. The thought of finding a new area was enticing enough to make Tsisia move. She stood and began to walk, her eyes drifting between what was ahead of her on the trail and occasional flickers of catching glances of her reflection in the water. She just couldn’t get over how odd she looked. Yet how natural everything was. Her movement, the horn on her face, the fact that she was walking purposely in the sunlight and felt herself absorbing it through her scales. Most fascinating perhaps was that her scales were multi-coloured and pale. They matched her coat, she liked them.

Tsisia’s attention was torn away from herself quickly however. Her walk was becoming long, tiresome and boring. More pressingly was her stomach was snarling at her. Not growling, snarling. She hadn’t eaten any one thing since her initial awakening and now her body was telling her it was time to fix that.

’Not yet.’ She told herself. What if her searching for a snack intervened with the discovery of others that looked like her? It would be a waste if she was unable to find them just because she wanted to eat something.

Though her hunger didn’t want to be suppressed easily eventually she stopped noticing it. She instead noticed that the ground turned from dirt to a soft, grainy substance. It was soft, pale and with the sun glancing down on it, it was hot. Sand she thought it was called.

Looking up from the sand Tsisia held her breath. Before her the world turned blue. Unlike anything she had witnessed so far, this was water she could truly appreciate. The pool- no that wasn’t quite the word… Ocean, yes, Ocean! It was vast, moving in a rippling, swaying motion. It wasn’t alive in the sense that Tsisia was, but it moved in a way that conveyed it was living. Was this body of water the cause of the rain? The cause of the growls from the sky? Inyoka, that would be its name. That would be what Tsisia called it.

She entered the sea. Because reason one, curiosity, for two, her feet were starting to boil. She felt immediately relieved as the coolness of the ocean swept over her brightly body. Though she discovered, water was harder to move in. It made things a tad bit slower. Tsisia felt stopped. Trapped, the current drifting on its own accord, not bending to her will like she wanted it to.

Still, she discovered how to tread water. She then took to actually swimming, pushing herself through the waves, moving with the current since it wouldn’t listen to her. Her desire to meet other B’alam compelled her to keep swimming.

It wasn’t long however before her fatigue caught up to her.

She was tired; her muscles had no desire to continue pumping, especially with no food to fuel her body’s energy. So Tsisia merely floated, the ocean was relaxing enough that she allowed herself to do so. She floated and felt the waves ripple beneath her. They rose, they sunk, they breathed like a creature. However at some point the young Nantil looked up, and noted that the place she had come from, her island... It was floating further and further away. Or more accurately, Tsisia was floating further and further away from it.

Panic overcame her. She began to fight through the waves to get back. If the island floated out of sight then there was no telling if she’d ever find land again. She might even be cursed to spend eternity in the Inyoka’s grasp! She shouted for the waves to obey her, no response came from the sea… Her fierce paddling only prohibited her from being capable of moving any closer though; it spent her energy twice as fast.

She stuck with it though. She was making progress; she was getting closer back to the dry land. Eventually, at some point the water turned shallow enough for her toes to touch sand again. At this point she bolted, surged through the water as fast as she could (which was not very fast at all, admirably) and threw herself with whatever energy she had left to spare onto the hot yellow sand.

Tsisia laughed. That was almost a disaster, but she had evaded it! She determined at that moment that the Inyoka must have been deaf, if it was a living thing at all. Otherwise it would have reacted to her cries and screams and kicking through it.

She decided that staying where she was presently, on the hot sand wouldn’t do forever, but for the next few minutes she gave herself that time to rest. Her green eyes focused on a log a little distance away, as the Inyoka’s water lapped up against it and eventually stole it away…

A rustling noise alerted her. Tsisia sat up and wide-eyed stared in front of her. What now would come her way? A b’alam?

An animal was apparently the correct answer. From over a small sand hill came hopping a… Long-eared creature. Bunny. Rabbit. Something like that. The animal didn’t seem to overly care that Tsisia was staring at it.

The hunger she had suppressed earlier came back tenfold. She was starving, and this thing before her was very, very much a pile of living food. It didn’t take long for Tsisia to begin the chase, she mustered some kind of hidden reserve of energy and practically soared towards that rabbit with the speed in which she got up and ran.

The rabbit, unfortunately for it, was less lucky. Tisisia pounced on it a few feet into the forest and bite down hard into its neck. The creature didn’t even have a time to give a death-cry before it met its end, but Tsisia didn’t care at this point. She was starving.

The meat was delicious in a way that was eye-opening. Food was delicious. She hadn’t realized until now that holding off on eating was a poor decision, because it simply wasn’t worth it. The meat filled her belly and she would use the energy it provided for the remainder of the day. Also, the taste, the taste was amazingness.

After having practically devoured her meal Tsisia felt a slight ping of regret. That creature hadn’t wanted to die. Had it not met Tsisia it wouldn’t have. She felt the obligation to do something for it… Burry it? No, too much work. Maybe just…

She took her paw and scraped it in the dirt next to her, then Tsisia drew a crude symbol of what she thought the sea looked like on its body. There. Now the Inyoka possessed it. If it even had a soul, she hadn’t sensed one in it…

Tsisia stood and gazed at the forest. Maybe… She’d explore some of it. Or you know, the whole thing.

---
2 Weeks Later
---
Today was a warm day.

Usually the island had a certain amount of heat on it anyways, but today was little more intense compared to the rest. If Tsisia had to give an estimate as to how hot it was compared to other days, this one was probably the hottest. Given that she was calling this the hottest day yet, island weather was actually pretty mild. It wasn’t too hot or too cold typically. Like being snuggled in a nice cozy blanket at all times.

Since her first two awakening days Tsisia had come to accept one or three things about her world. The Inyoka was the rain, the sea and it was the provider of liquid that could be drunk. It was good in that sense, she guessed. However she had entered the sea twice more other than when she first had that second day of her existing. That time had been wretched. She had bobbed under the waves, and took a mouthful of salt-water. It was the first time she learned that the sea was not drinkable, the Inyoka made rain and waterfalls for drinking, not seas. The salt had tasted horrible, and it made her crave more water. Drinkable water.

Hmm. Ever since then she hadn’t attempted to swim, maybe today that would change, but most likely not.

Tsisia was already up and moving but the sun was only just beginning to twinkle onto the lands. Well, as far as she could tell anyways. She had discovered the longer she spent time up and moving in the daylight hours the brighter her horn began to glow during the dark ones. She valued that light in darkness, it made her feel safe in some strange sort of way.

Right now her horn was glowing brightly. Even if sunrise was only just beginning she had ample amount of light to see somewhat clearly. Thus, she began her daily journey around the island.

The cavern she had used as shelter that first night had now become her permanent humble home. She returned to it with each nightfall and slept until sunrise, when she made her ‘rounds’, if you felt like calling them such.

She’d begin the day with a hunt, to satisfy her hunger. She had a habit of drawing runes on her prey, and liked to think the creators could do what they liked with them if she did so. With that out of the way already at this point Tsisia was walking through the jungle. By midday she’d get half was across the island if she walked quick. There was no need to go the whole length of the spit of land, she trusted the jungle would be safe even without her daily guarding rituals.

Was that what she doing? Guarding? She liked to think she was seeking. Searching for new things, exciting things. If she was feeling particularly lucky maybe she’d run into another b’alam, though that had yet to actually happen. Still, she could hope, couldn’t she?

She sighed and looked at the dirt. The Dunia. Another of her spirit-friends. She preferred to believe the earth was held together by this spirit. Boulders fell away because the Dunia was unable to keep it in the solid shape of the land any longer. The Dunia was hardy, tough, but fair. Or so she liked to think. Tsisia knew well that her ‘spirits’ she surrounded herself with didn’t talk.

Her best friend by far was the Yomshayeli, the wind. It, she determined was the breather of life. It’s what created ‘life’ in the sense that birds were just as alive as Tsisia was. The spirits were alive, just not in the same way. Hmm. She’d need to come up with a good way to explain it to any other b’alam if they were out there.

You see, Tsisia had begun to accept she was only B’alam in existence. Well the thought of such wasn’t horrible, it wasn’t that great either. She was lonely. She wanted others. Just someone to talk to, to share stories with. Her reflection in the water was not sufficing when it came to carrying on a long conversation.

So each night she pleased with the Yomshayeli to send her another b’alam. Someday, maybe it’d answer her. Maybe she’d come across another b’alam. But with each passing day Tsisia’s fate in such a thing was lessening. She was actually beginning to think she was being ignored, or punished. Maybe she had been like them once. The Yomshayeli , The Dunia, the Inyoka… Maybe she did something bad and now was being punished for it, cursed to never speak with them again, hold no memories of what she did. Quite the punishment, quite horrid.

But then Tsisia heard something. Something unlike other animal noises. Her walk through the forest was progressing as it usually did. Birds fluttered from branch to branch, squawking and biting at one another as they bickered. Tsisia sighed, she even sometimes silently prayed she would have been born with the ability to understand them. At least then she’d have someone to talk to.

*whump* Something banged on the ground with a loud thud. Tsisia had spun quickly to face whatever it was, but whatever landed hadn’t landed near her.

At first she stopped to examine herself. She hadn’t tripped, had she? No, she was very much standing.

“Argh.” *thud*

There it was again! The noise! The noise of… A being, a person. Hope flooded Tsisia in a way it hadn’t ever before. Was someone else on the island? Had someone other than herself finally awoken? Had the Yomshayeli finally answered her wishes and demands?!

Only one way to find out. Tsisia moved to the area of the noises swiftly. She kept her head low, her body crawling. She peaked her head up from the log she was feebly attempting to hide behind.

There it was. Another being like her. A B’alam!

Tsisia stared in fixation at the creature. The being looked like her, yes, but it lacked the prominent horn that Tsisia had on her face. It also lacked the scales she had. In fact, the only way the creature truly resembled her was that it bore resemblance to her was its shape. It was feline-like, just like Tsisia.

Oh but she didn’t care! It was another person! Another being! Someone to actual talk with, to bounce ideas off of and have them say something back!

The being was presently trying to figure out how to stand. It gave Tisisa more relief then it should have to know she wasn’t the only one who had difficulties standing upon awakening for the first time.

Apparently, Tisisa wasn’t as sneaky as she liked to believe. The being noticed her watching them, and turned to face in her direction.

“Uh.” The other spoke. “Hi?”

Tsisia wasn’t sure what to do. Response? Flee? In the end she went for something simply. A conversation starter. “Hello.” Tsisia stood, feeling no need to hide anymore. “Who are you?” She asked, but then before the other could respond added, “I’m Tsisia, pleasure to meet you!”

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